Two high-school age girls are chatting in the seat facing the back door. The conversation is lighthearted, until one of the girls casually checks the ingredients of the “juice” concoction she is drinking.

They discuss for a few minutes but neither seems to know for sure. Girl 1 starts to become agitated. Both start looking around for someone to ask and finally tap a boy about their age, who is listening to his headphones.

Girl 2: “Excuse me, do you know what ‘skim milk’ is?”

The boy looks at them blankly. Since I’ve been eavesdropping (per usual), I butt in.

Back when I was a young BCiT, I made my grandma mad by (unintentionally) announcing her age to a full 55. At six, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want people to know how old she was. Even now, I find all the shame and secrecy surrounding the number of years a person has been on the planet to be somewhat difficult to understand.

Folks, I’m no spring chicken. Unlike my father, I can’t claim to predate I-5*, but I am old enough to have a (somewhat fuzzy) memory of the Sonics only national championship. (Sorry, didn’t mean to start down that path again.) I’ve tended to view my advancing age as a good thing, since—for one thing—it’s advancing. (I’ll take being alive plus one over the alternative any day.) It also means I’ve lived enough years to have learned a thing or two—and that I’m inching ever closer to that Metro senior discount. I digress.

Last Friday, on an afternoon 3 ride home from visiting some friends on Queen Anne, little Chicklet passed the time (and entertained her neighbors) by making up a song about us.

Somewhere near Blanchet, two black, high-school age girls board. They use the back door, because it’s closer to them when the bus stops.

The driver immediately starts hollering at them to come to the front and pay. His tone is harsh, definitely out of bounds for the level of infraction. The girls do as he asks but do not comment until they find their seats, at which point they begin whispering to each other in earnest.

At UW Medical Center, a blonde, twentysomething woman boards through the back door, presumably for the same reason as the girls. Again, the driver starts yelling.

“You need to come up here and pay. Do NOT get on at the back!”

The woman looks surprised but shrugs and complies.

One of the high school girls mutters to the other, “At least we know he’s not racist.”